Making The Disappeared Appear (2023) by Wantanee Siripattananuntakul

Making the Disappeared Appear examines how war, border regimes, and state-led development have reorganised life in northern Thailand, producing long-term ecological loss and multispecies displacement. Rather than presenting environmental degradation as an unintended consequence, the work exposes disappearance as a political process shaped by territorial control, militarisation, and extractive economies.

The five-channel installation follows rhinos, elephants, kingfishers, Asian golden cats, and life along the Mekong River Basin, whose habitats have been progressively fragmented by conflict, infrastructure, and urban expansion. Their diminishing presence reflects how both human and nonhuman lives are governed through overlapping systems of surveillance, displacement, and economic restructuring.

Interweaving Lanna oral histories, Joysor traditions, and traditional music, the work constructs a counter-archive that resists official narratives of progress and stability. These vernacular accounts document how extinction, migration, and environmental damage are administered through policy decisions, warfare, and development projects.

Rather than mourning what has been lost, Making the Disappeared Appear confronts the ongoing production of disappearance. It situates multispecies survival as a political question, inseparable from struggles over land, borders, and historical accountability.

Rather than mourning what has been lost, Making the Disappeared Appear confronts the ongoing production of disappearance. It situates multispecies survival as a political question, inseparable from struggles over land, borders, and historical accountability.